Jon Wisnoski

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since Jun 11, 2014
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Zone 6b
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Zone 6b, Ontario, Canada
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Recent posts by Jon Wisnoski

I do trim, but you want fat in your ground meat.
I dont think the size of the chunks matter to much as when it is clogged and the meat is going nowhere it becomes almost a paste for some reason. I send mostly frozen meat through the grinder, but if anything this seemed to make it worse this time, which is what lead my to thinking maybe heating everything up would be better. I have done less chilled meat than this before but this time it might as been the most frozen ever.

I have done pork and beef. This last one that is really not working at all is almost completely frozen beef.

I guess I should just send as lean as possible meat their it?
3 months ago
Hello,

I have this lens manual meat grinder. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes all it does it get clogged constantly. Like I get 1 cup of ground meat out of it before it needs a cleaning.

The basic design utilizes an auger that pushes the meat against the cutting plate. Pretty standard. This design seems to require more friction between the meat and the wall of the tube than the screw and the meat. Specifically the wall of the tube if covered in ridges that (particularly in one direction)  grab the meat and hold it still at the screw pushes it towards the cutting plate. What happens when the meat grinder clogs is that the walls get covered in fat and the meat just spins in a circle stuck to a single location on the screw.

I dont understand why it works so poorly a lot of the time. This auger design is pretty standard, I am pretty sure all meat grinders use it. The one possible difference is much of this meat grinder is made of cast aluminum.

Am I just doing something wrong?

One thought I had is maybe I could heat up the grinder to try and liquidize the fat?
3 months ago
Sorry it took so long. Here are some pictures.



1 year ago
Hello all, After a lot of research and messing about I finished my weeder.

To answer some of the concerns and questions, lets first start off with the reason the why.

Safety: The standard multi burner flame weeder I went with mixes the flammable gas in the ignition chamber, instead of through a hole upstream in the pipe. This was a no brainier for me, I did not want to be messing with the fluid dynamics of explosive gases or dragging a burner though a muddy field when it had holes in the system not inside the burn chamber. This design is literally impossible to screw up, the entire system only has holes where it is allowed and supposed to be on fire.

Cost: A single burner unit in Canada is about $80, a multi burner unit is about $800. This cost me $20 in materials to build.

Why flame weeding: We already use a single burner flame weeder, it works great for the few things that we use it for but is slow. It is a traditional organic method. People even use it directly on their food (BBQs). Maybe it is bad for you, I am no expert. Also, here in Ontario you could not get a flame to spread if you wanted to. Really it was never my decision to  do any flame weeding, I just saw people using a slow method of flame weeding and losing out of some beds because of this slow speed so decided to make it easier.

Design: The single burner unit I had came with a 18 PSI regulator rated for a maximum of 500k BTU of throughput. The Burner wand was rated at 100k, so I could use 5 of them (which is the standard multi burner design). The unit ran off a 1/4" pipe, had a 3/64" fuel nozzle, a 2" X 5" pipe burn chamber guard pinched on one end to connect to the pipe leaving two air intake openings. The unit already was capable of connecting to standard 1/4" pipe thread so it was easy to just copy this setup exactly. The one thing I changed was it had a on/off valve near the burner end of the contraption that used a tiny hole for throughput, I left this off to maintain as much flow as possible.
1 year ago
Hello Douglas Aplenstock,

I think it is the best solution for organically weeding carrot beds prior to the carrots breaching the soil.

I already have something like included pic, which seems to be the same thing as a tiger torch, but want something that would do that over a 3 foot line.
1 year ago
Anyone ever make or see a simple wide DIY Flame Weeder? Most designs I see are just single burners connected to a frame in a line, but presumably you could drill holes down the length of pipe, install a wind shielding skirt/burn chamber/air mix chamber with some air holes on the top???

Looking at the single burner designs it looks like the top holes are almost half the size of the bottom exhaust holes, and the skirt is probably about 5 inches. The biggest issue I see is getting the right air/fuel mixture in the burn chamber.

I am seeing some people make heating/cooking style burners with a pipe with hole drilled in it, but that uses a pre mixer, with the air mixing in the pipe on the way to the holes.
1 year ago

Kevin David wrote:avoid fat when freeze drying.



I am not familiar with freeze drying but they may be talking about general food preservation techniques. Fat will outlast wet protein, and is used to cover and save protein in many preservation techniques, but dried protein will outlast fat which can go rancid.

It is also not very good at letting moisture flow thorough it, so can retard the drying process. Colostrum will dry and store similar to whole milk, and I am sure their are guides on how to dry that and if a freeze dryer will work.
2 years ago

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
To make tortillas, finely grind the freshly nixtamalized corn adding water as needed.
To make tamales, coarsely grind the fresh nixtamal.

To make masa harina, dry the corn, and then grind it to a fine powder.
Posole can be made from either fresh or dried nixtamal.




Rereading this for like the 5th time to remind myself of this recipe. And I don't think I ever paid that much attention to this end part. What exactly is the difference between grinding wet vs grinding dry?
2 years ago
Hello all,

I am confused as to why all the dehydrated potato recipes call for you to steam or boil them, particularly when you can easily bake potatoes.

If you must cook the potato first, fine. But why add water just before taking it out again?

Is their any reason why instead of boiling potatoes before mashing and drying, I should not just bake the potatoes before mashing and drying?
3 years ago
I have a new construction Building I plan on using dense pack cellulose in the attic, floor, and walls.

Does anyone know how you can tell when it is dense packed enough?

I am working with housewrap with 1x4" every 2 feet vertically and metal siding on one side with planned poly vapor barrier on the other.
I am sure the first time I looked this up everything I read was "blow into poly" but now everything I see is "blow into netting".

I am pretty sure I will just have to go slow and hand dense pack it. But like for example, does the ceiling below the attic have to be finished? OR is vapor barrier enough to hold it up?
3 years ago